A White World in a Brown Country: Esteban Casati from Argentina

Esteban grew up in a middle-class Buenos Aires family, well cared for and, by his own account, occupying a bubble of privilege: “My Waldorf school was a blond school. Brown people who worked there as cleaners could not afford the fees.” He is nevertheless grateful: “I had a difficult time in high school – but the teachers were really interested in us: they wanted me in!” The experiences he made as a gifted, troublesome but cherished pupil were the strongest motivation in his decision to become a teacher himself: “I wanted to give back, to socialise my privilege.”

Esteban planned to study for a mainstream education degree, because this is mandatory in Argentina also for Waldorf teachers. He appreciates this: “It can be helpful in not becoming sectarian.” But then he joined a dual Waldorf training while embedded in a Buenos Aires school as teaching assistant. In the final year there were no tutors, and Esteban and his nine fellow students took it in turns to research topics, teach each other and manage their own training, practising the essential Waldorf qualities of self-reliance and creativity.

After graduating, he moved to Patagonia in the South of Argentina and became a class teacher at the newly established Waldorf school in Neuquén, an area heavily industrialised and dependent on mining and the extraction of hydrocarbons. The climate is rough, both socially and meteorologically: the cold winds blow much less pleasantly here than in cultured Buenos Aires. For nine years Esteban and his wife, also a class teacher, were carried by the pioneering energy they and their colleagues continually invested in the place. Then they had children themselves, and decided they could not justify raising them in these harsh conditions. During the Pandemic, when fears and restrictions laid bare social disharmony and mental health challenges, three pupils died in short succession, two of them by suicide. The family moved to Córdoba where Esteban took on a sixth grade class. His daughters also attend this school, and his wife works in another one. Life is more comfortable now, more secure and settled. And yet Esteban feels unease about the still social prevailing injustices: “Neuquén taught me many things, not least the ability to do things for myself – to question how I relate to the world.” He is committed to the principle of Sumak Kawsay, a newly invented Quechua expression sometimes translated into Spanish as “buen vivir”: thinking well and feeling well in order to do well. It is a kind of practical, ecological socialism without following Western socialist theory and was adopted into the governing philosophies of Bolivia and Ecuador.

When asked what developments he is looking for in order to remain committed to the Waldorf path, he speaks about the urgent need for schools to become truly inclusive. He cites the historically strong German heritage of Waldorf Argentina as a present problem: a well-meaning, but ultimately divisive colonial attitude still prevails: “My school is still a blond school.” An urgent energy can be sensed about him, an inner fire that will not be quenched with bland reassurances: in the seminars at the Goetheanum he asks perceptive questions and politely challenges contributors. People like Esteban are agents for change: energetic, highly skilled, with contextual, relevant experience of social injustice, and increasingly unwilling to accept answers that don’t offer solutions.